August/September 2013 Lite Challenge: The Continent of Verysi

[Thurlor]

It's been a while since I've done any mapping and I figured this to be the perfect opportunity to 're-start'.

I present The Continent of Verysi, the sole continent on the planet Evaria.


### Latest WIP ###

Verysi 001.png


There is obviously a fair bit yet to be done. Cities, labels, title, border, scale, etc. Still not sure what scale this will end up being. It will either span 50° North/South and East/West, or 75° North/South and east/West. Still trying to figure out how to translate that to distances.

The current graticule is only a place holder, The lines are spaced at 5° intervals. The continent is roughly centred on 30° N.

For those interested, I used Wilbur to created the heightmap, Inkscape for the coastlines, followed by GIMP to combine all the various layers.

[Thurlor]

- I've begun work on the rivers, converting them to paths.
- Added an emboss effect as an overlay for the land.
- Created a place holder border and title.

### Latest WIP ###

Verysi 004a.jpg

[Thurlor]

Playing around with the colours at the moment. Still un-decided on what palette to go with. Yet to find a border/title I really like.

I'm starting to think I may have gone a bit over-board on the rivers. Meh, it may be fiddly and time consuming but I find it relaxing.

### Latest WIP ###

Verysi 005a.jpg

[dwsel]

As for me I prefer the smoothnes of the previous darker one, but the current showcases more details in mountains.

[Seraphine_Harmonium]

I would say maybe tone down the drastic lightness of the most inland bits, and maybe soften the transition with some kind of blur or gradient, but I like the new mountains a lot more.

[Maezar]

I like it! The contours are very natural. It also shows you're thinking beyond the plasma fractal landforms one sees so much of. There are a lot of really interesting regions here.
I am struck however by the fact that your most elevated mountain range ends rather abruptly at a shallow sea. What's the story there?
Out of curiosity, have you figured out where the equator lies?

[Thurlor]

@ dwsel

As I said, I'm still trying to find a good colour scheme. Currently I'm trying a combination of the 2nd and 3rd versions.


@ Seraphine_Harmonium

The pale green colouring is definitely too bright. The transition is already blurred but I didn't want to blur it too much else it won't properly follow the contours. The transition between the dark and light greens is supposed to be at an altitude of 1km.


@ Maezar

The land contours were painted in by hand in Wilbur, whilst the sea contours were created with a simple mound process followed my some hand painting and blurring to get rid of the troughs and to level out the sea above the shelf.

In regards to the shallow sea next to the high mountains, well I wasn't really paying much attention to geological features below the water. I'm still considering having a flat sea with no contours if the land and sea don't seem to match up. Anyway the 'story' of that mountain range is that it is the equivalent of the Himalayas for the planet Evaria, resulting from the collision of the smaller plate with the larger southern plate (I hope that makes sense).

The equator sits 5° south of the map. The graticule is spaced at 5° intervals and spans from 5°N to 55°N.

[Maezar]

How did you do the rivers? They're cool. What is WILBUR?

[waldronate]

WILBUR is the spawn of Slayton!

[Thurlor]

@ Maezar

All of the erosion effects and the rivers were done in Wilbur as well. The final rivers are paths that I manually lay over the rivers that are generated by Wilbur.


@ waldronate

Wilbur is absolutely great and I couldn't really want more considering it's free. Well, not without seeming greedy